Stealing from Victims. California's slimy, rightwing, movie-star governor has floated the idea of passing a law that would seize 75% of the punitive damages awarded by courts instead of permitting that money to go to the victim of the wrongdoing that produced those awards. Astounding. How does the state - any state - have the right to take money away from plaintiffs in any trial whatsoever? Isn't that called "stealing"? I can see taxing verdicts as income, fine, but stealing them out from under the victims of gross misdeeds who may have gone thru years of litigation trying to get justice? That's just plain wrong.
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Schwarzenegger justifies his plan by pointing to similar laws in eight other states - laws that were apparently passed without public outcry, probably because people didn't know they were being passed - and by suggesting that the State of California could help to close a budget gap by stealing from the victims of civil misdeeds. The L.A. Times reports, "'Most states that have these [laws] don't say explicitly their goal is to raise revenue'," said Catherine Sharkey, a law professor at Columbia University. 'There have been problems with these funds in some states. In some cases, the courts didn't even know the state had them. Damages would come in, and no one would notify the state.'" The courts didn't even know such laws were on the books, or where to send the money? How is that for government secrecy, passing laws so sneakily that neither the people at large nor even some arms of government know these evil laws have been passed!?
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Schwarzenegger's Thief-in-Chief justifies this outrageous theft from victims: "'Punitive damages were never meant to be windfalls'" for those who file lawsuits, said Richard Costigan, the governor's legislative affairs secretary. 'They are meant to punish the defendants. Society as a whole is impacted by those actions. How does it benefit everybody when one plaintiff gets $100 million?'" That is easily answered, in the same article: "'The reason the award goes to the plaintiff is to incentivize the bringing of the lawsuit'," said Jim Sturdevant, president of the Consumer Attorneys of California. 'The plaintiff is the person who takes the risk involved.'" In short, absent enticing financial incentives, there wouldn't be any lawsuit at all and thus no civil punishment for the guilty. Many people would not, and could not afford to, pursue a lawsuit that not only could go on for YEARS (as long as seven years in many places, and even longer thru appeals) and cost enormous amounts of money. Suing someone can be very, very expensive. I work for attorneys and happen to have some idea of how expensive litigation can be.
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My firm recently won a case that someone brought against our client for $100,000 (no punitive damages in this particular case). Our client offered $20,000 in settlement to keep from going to trial. The other side refused that offer, so went to trial. We 'lost', and the court awarded the plaintiff $14,000 - LESS than we had offered as a settlement. Our fees amounted to about $105,000 - yes, our client was unwilling to pay what it saw as litigation blackmail to save money - and under a provision in New Jersey law I had never heard of, because the plaintiff refused to settle and its award was less than the settlement offered, our client had the right to demand that the plaintiff pay our legal fees, because if the plaintiff hadn't been so hell-bent on going to trial, our client could have saved the huge cost of that trial. So because the plaintiff wasn't willing to settle for $20,000 in a weak case but insisted on going to trial, it (a landlord corporation) found itself not only spending a fortune on its own lawyers but also paying our client's fees, which amounted to MORE than what the plaintiff asked for in the first place! Even without an "offer of settlement" law, litigation is risky and expensive, and it is not in the interest of society to dissuade the Little Guy from suing Big Guys when the Big Guys are wrong.
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Schwarzenegger wants to steal punitive damages from victims of wrongdoing, as to add another barrier between people who have been injured by corporate wrongdoing and justice. It gets worse.
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Schwarzenegger, the foreign invader who has dared suggest that the U.S. Constitution be amended to allow him to run for President - compare Adolf Hitler, a foreigner (Austrian, like Schwarzenegger) who won the chancellorship of Germany in elections and then demanded that the constitution of Germany be amended to make him dictator - has sneaked this proposal into a 96-page budget proposal at page 91! And his proposal would forbid courts from assessing punitive damages for the same offense more than once. That means that if a major auto manufacturer knew of a potentially deadly defect in its cars, and one Californian is merely injured as a result and brings a lawsuit in which s/he wins $150,000 in punitive damages, that automaker could not again be hit with punitive damages for the same defect, even if 146 - or 6,000, or a million - Californians are later KILLED in accidents caused by that defect! Yes, the figures are exaggerated to show, by carrying the logic to its extreme, how outrageous this right-wing scheme to immunize corporate wrongdoers from the foreseeable consequences of their wrongful acts, is.
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Indeed, I can easily imagine major corporate wrongdoers actually seeking out people who have suffered minor injuries and putting up token resistance to a minor award as to prevent a much greater award from later litigants who suffer much worse injuries - or multiple deaths.
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As the consumer attorney Jim Sturdevant observes, "auto companies [could well do] a cost benefit analysis in which they decide it is cheaper to just pay a one-time fine of [say] $23 million [or, in my example, $150,000] than to pay for a costly recall."
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The real intent of this proposed law is to keep people who have been injured by corporate wrongdoers from suing - not just from collecting 'excessive' awards, which are not up to them but to juries and courts, but from suing at all: "Academics say [these laws] were not intended to bring in money for the state but to discourage excessive lawsuits." An "excessive" lawsuit, in case you didn't know, is one for an accident in which you were not injured. This is distinct from "frivolous" lawsuits, such as one cited in that article, by a stupid, stupid old woman in New Mexico who demanded that McDonald's pay millions because that dumb b***h put a hot cup of coffee between her legs and splashed it on herself while driving!
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Frivolous lawsuits should be dismissed. But whether a lawsuit is "excessive" is for juries and judges to decide, not Arnold Schwarzenegger or other evil right-wingers who feel that the rich, be they individuals or corporations, have the right to trample the poor underfoot and not have to pay for the harm they do. Alas, there's nothing new in this. In medieval England, nobles could, as of right, hunt foxes or stags by running their horses thru the fields of 'peasants', trampling and destroying their crops, and not be held to account for the destruction they caused.
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Schwarzenegger's Thief-in-Chief claims that 11 other states already have laws against multiple punitive-damages awards, but those wicked states are not listed. The article does, however, list the Evil Eight that Schwarzenegger cites as having passed similar laws to rob victims of civil wrongs: Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oregon, and Utah. It is hardly surprising that an Old South hellhole like Georgia would be on such a Dishonor Roll, but Illinois and, of all places, liberal Oregon?! I suggest that the people of these states should demand repeal of such measures, and find ways to punish the legislators and governors who passed them.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:49 PM